The Roman industrial revolution

An article by Richard Carrier on the Roman Empire. I may have linked to it before (don´t even remember), but never mind, here we go again. (The discussion thread is also important.) 

Carrier´s main point is that Christianity didn´t promote science, nor "saved Western civilization", but I actually found other aspects of his essay more interesting. Such as the diagrams showing "industrial" output, urbanization, general standard of living and trade expansion in the European Mediterranean region. (One of the diagrams is confusingly introduced by Carrier as showing the situation in "the Greek East", actually it only deals with "core Greece", the area today known as Greece. Thus, not Constantinople or Alexandria.) The diagrams show that the Roman Empire at its peak was a more advanced civilization than Europe during the High and Late Middle Ages (the latter period is called the Renaissance by Carrier). As in *much* more advanced. 

It´s also interesting to note that Rome never managed to stop the decline that began during the so-called Crisis of the Third Century. Note that all indicators move sharply downwards and continue down even during the fourth century, suggesting that the "reforms" of Diocletian and Constantine didn´t do crap to stop the decline, not even from the perspective of the ruling elite (except in the very narrow sense that it continued to be the ruling elite - and even that, only barely in the Western Empire). If I understand the graphs correctly, the East Roman or Byzantine Empire wasn´t much to write home about either, at least not compared to the early Roman Empire (which actually surprised me somewhat). Note finally that "core Greece" was substantially better off during the Classical period than the Roman one, and then follows (more or less) the Roman pattern. Still in 1900, Greece was on average substantially less developed than during the Classical period!

Another point made in the article is that the Romans were close to an Industrial Revolution, or perhaps even *had* an Industrial Revolution, albeit (of course) without the benefit of fossil fuels. However, they had an industrial apparatus of sorts based on waterpower. The technology of the empire was, in general, more advanced than often given credit for. I find this very interesting, since Carrier says in the discussion thread (and other articels on his blog) that there was no Scientific Revolution in the Roman Empire (although he does believe they came relatively close, within one or two centuries close). Is an Industrial Revolution possible without a so-called Scientific Revolution, then? 

Pondering... 

Ancient Industrial Machinery & Modern Christian Mythology

Update. Here is the article about the Roman economy I linked to before, also from Carrier´s blog:

Imperial Roman Economics as an Example of an Overthrown Paradigm